


The Trees of Sojea

by pearbean



Category: The Unorthodox Engineers - Colin Kapp
Genre: Christmas, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:03:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearbean/pseuds/pearbean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Unorthodox Engineering squad find themselves tasked with building a base on a planet with a vast ocean - so vast that it covers the entire planet's surface. As an added complication, the ocean is concentrated sulphuric acid. With no supplies and only limited funds, the U.E. squad must come up with a solution using Fritz Van Noon's inverted-sideways way of looking at a problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Trees of Sojea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SnorkackCatcher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnorkackCatcher/gifts).



> I actually matched you on Perry Mason, but your description of The Unorthodox Engineers sounded too wonderful to pass up (quite aside from the fact that I find it difficult to back down from a challenge... ;) ). I managed to track down second hand copies of the five 1960s SF anthologies the individual stories were first published in, and gleefully read my way through them. They are as brilliant as you made them sound.
> 
> I only hope that my attempt comes close enough to what you were hoping for.

“All right, Jacko,” Lieutenant Fritz Van Noon was calling as the Corporal arrived, “try starting it up!”

Sergeant Jacko Hine, standing in front of an impressive array of switches and dials, gestured to the newcomer, who hovered, unsure of where to stand in amongst the organised chaos of the workshop. “You may want to stand back a bit,” he said. “Let’s just say I’m behind this sheet of plastic for a reason.”

The Corporal took two long steps back until she was pressed in the doorway. “I’m looking for Lieutenant Van Noon,” she said, looking at the large tank of water and the contraption floating in it with some trepidation.

Jacko nodded, “Cover your ears,” he said, and flicked one of the switches.

There was a sudden bang, and a column of water plumed up out of the tank, and then rained back down over the workshop and its two unprotected occupants. While the Corporal spluttered a little at her sudden unexpected dousing in cold water, Jacko rushed out from behind the screen, dry as a bone, and over to the side of the tank. Fritz was already there, examining the piece of machinery carefully.

“Well, I wouldn’t say that it worked,” Jacko said, critically. “If you’d put a man in that, he’d have lost both legs, one arm and most certainly any prospect he had of having any ruddy children.”

“Where’s your faith?” Fritz said, stepping back and surveying the smouldering remains in the tank. “It clearly worked in principle. The thing’s    
mostly   
intact. We just need to make a few adjustments. Fine-tune it a bit.”

He stepped back from the tank and dripped his way over to the Corporal. “I’m Van Noon,” he said. “You wanted me for something?”

The Corporal remembered herself, and snapped upright to salute, disregarding the water that still ran off the end of her nose. “Lieutenant Van Noon,” the Corporal said, “Colonel Dawson asked if you could stop by his office this afternoon.”

Van Noon frowned, feeling as though the name ought to ring a bell. “Colonel Dawson?”

“He’s on a month’s rotation on Terra, back from frontier surveys with the Terran Exploratory Task Force, sir,” the Corporal replied. “He has an office in the temporary assignment wing, room B-25.”

Not long afterwards Van Noon found himself outside room B-25, newly dried and tidied, his hat in his hand. The door stood partially open, and Fritz could see Colonel Dawson within, seated at his desk, apparently reading over some paperwork.

The first impression of Colonel Dawson was of a very thin, very stern looking man with a pale face that spoke of years of getting sunlight only through the UV-shielded view-ports of deep-space exploration craft.

Fritz paused in the doorway and rapped on the wall outside the frame to alert Colonel Dawson of his presence. Dawson looked up, and then stood.

"Ah, Lieutenant Van Noon, come in," he said, greeting Fritz gravely and holding out a hand for him to shake. “Won’t you have a seat?”

Fritz stepped in and looked around at the bare walls and empty desk. Colonel Dawson seemed to catch his gaze and smiled a watery smile. "Sorry for the spartan surroundings," he said, "I'm only back for three more days before my hypership leaves again. I wanted to talk to you... General Nash can't praise you highly enough and you sound like just the man for the conundrum I find myself faced with.”

He walked around to the front of the desk and paused by one of the view-ports, looking out across the little square of manicured lawn. On each of the four sides was a view-port belonging to another office. The lawn was kept perfectly maintained by a bio-regulation system for feeding and water, was cut by a small automatic robot, and had never seen the sun.  
  
“I take it,” Fritz said, sitting down in the proffered chair, “that you think this is a matter for the Unorthodox Engineers?”

“Quite so,” Colonel Dawson replied. “I know you’re in quite considerable demand since your success at Serendipity, but I hope you’ll be able to help me.”

That was something of an understatement. The U.E. Squad was in danger of becoming the star of the Engineering Reserve following their work on Negrav, especially in the wake of the stir that the challenge had made at the Space Engineering Symposium.

Fritz had recently and, somewhat to his surprise, suddenly found himself under considerable pressure from Colonel Belling to increase their numbers.

As their leader, Fritz was finding a certain amount of perverse pleasure in being the man with sole control over the drafting of new members into the squad. Much to Colonel Belling’s annoyance, Fritz had dug in his heels and refused to accept new recruits unless they were personally vetted by himself for what he called his “inverted-sideways way of thinking”.

“You do know, Sir,” Fritz said, before Colonel Dawson could begin, “that we’re lined up for a spell on leave for the next three weeks.”  
  
Colonel Dawson shuffled his feet rather sheepishly, which came as something of a surprise to Fritz, used to Colonel Belling’s standard gruff, uncompromising attitude. “Yes, I’m afraid I did know that. I was hoping you might allow me to... jump the queue.

“I’ve been speaking with Ivan Nash - he mentioned that there’s nothing you like so much as a problem that orthodox engineering can’t solve. I think I have one of those for you, Lieutenant.”

Fritz frowned and folded his arms. “We’ve had back to back assignments for several months, Sir. You’re asking me and my team to give up our leave, Colonel. I’m sure you understand our reluctance.”

“Very well then,” Colonel Dawson said. “I’ll have to go through the standard channels. I was hoping to appeal to you directly - Colonel Belling and I have never seen eye to eye on most things and I don’t think that he’ll be looking upon me with much favour.”

Fritz perked up visibly at the mention of irritation to his superior. “Well, at the very least I suppose I can listen to what you have to say.”

“Thank you,” Colonel Dawson said. “I won’t waste any of your time trying to persuade you further, then. I’ll just get straight down to the point.”

“As you may know, there’s a certain amount of pressure on our space survey teams to come up with the goods. Mining opportunities, farming opportunities, trading opportunities – all of these come up trumps in promotion reviews.” He began to pace, walking back and forth in front of the door while Fritz watched.

“To put it frankly, the last three systems my team have surveyed have been a complete bust. Nothing wrong with them, just… nothing special about them.

“Sojea is different. The first three planets we ran our spectroscopic surveys on showed possibilities of gold, iron and copper deposits – and rich ones. The fourth planet in the system seemed to be rich in diamonds and the fifth in the raw materials needed to make hypership fuel.

“In short, we seem to have hit the jackpot. The problem is proving it. We need samples and more detailed survey information to send back to Terra.”

“The usual method is to use your survey ship and launch the planetary survey teams from there,” Fritz pointed out. “Why can’t you do that?”

“Our survey ships simply aren’t equipped to launch survey operations in hostile atmospheres, and unfortunately for us five of the six planets in the Sojea System fall under that description.” Colonel Dawson shrugged. “We need to establish a permanent base in the system and bring the specialist equipment in.”

“So you need us to help establish a survey base under hostile atmospheric conditions?” Fritz asked. He sat up straighter and propped his elbows on his knees. “We’ve worked on such operations before, but really there are other teams far better sui-“

“Ah, no,” Colonel Dawson interrupted. “The sixth planet in the system has a breathable atmosphere. And a good one – very similar proportions of oxygen and nitrogen to Terra. I’d like you to help me establish a survey station there.”

“Forgive me, Colonel,” Fritz said, “but I’m afraid that I still can’t see why on Terra you need the U.E. Squad.”

“Primarily because of the cost,” Colonel Dawson said. “Something that you ought to know about, Lieutenant Van Noon - I’ve read transcripts of your speech at the Space Engineering Symposium.

“This system is right on the outskirts of our explored territory. As you pointed out, even the cost of shipping a spanner out to Sojea is enough to build an entire community block on Terra. Any supplies that do make it out that far are being diverted to the sugar farms on Dromica or the ridiculous new resort they’re constructing on Tahiti IX – how they think they’re going to get any tourists out that far I have no idea.

“What I need is a team who can get out there and come up with a solution on the planet itself, preferably costing us as little as possible in the way of time and money in the process.”

“You can transport flat-packed Knudsen huts for almost nothing these days - you scarcely need our help with that, Colonel. Building a Knudsen is the first thing most recruits ever learn.” Fritz sat back in his chair.

“Which would be fine,” Colonel Dawson said, “Except that hostile-atmosphere survey equipment includes a Goraldi compressor, at least one Harvey pump and a pre-fab decontamination module. Bringing all that out to Sojea will take up our weight and volume allowance for the next 18 months, no room for Knudsens.

“And there’s another problem. Sojea VI - that’s the planet with the breathable atmosphere - the entire planet’s surface is ocean.”

Fritz opened his mouth to speak and Colonel Dawson went on hastily, “Before you point out that there are also marine-modified Knudsens, I’ll remind you that we don’t have any room for Knudsens, and also explain that the ocean isn’t water. It’s concentrated sulphuric acid.”

“How interesting,” Fritz said, smiling a little. “This does sound a bit more up our alley. So, the brief is to use readily available materials to construct a base capable of supporting a Goraldi compressor, on a planet with no land mass, covered in sulphuric acid? General Nash was quite right - that’s exactly the kind of challenge that I like.”  
  
“What do you think, Lieutenant, will you do it?”

* * *

  
Van Noon’s first view of Sojea VI was of a small planet covered almost completely in thick cloud. There was little in the way of breaks in the cover – just gently thinning places like a worn patch on a pair of old trousers. Jacko Hine was at the controls of the ferry-craft, while Fritz was strapped into the co-pilot’s seat, staring out of the main viewport with rapt attention.

They had left the remains of the skeleton U.E. team in the orbiting hypership together with a full compliment of marine-modified Knudsens (at Fritz’s insistence and owing much to Harris the Quartermaster’s ingenuity) and as much of their standard kit as they could usefully accomodate within them. Fritz’s first priority was choosing a spot on the planet for their makeshift floating camp, even if it turned out that one spot was as good as another on an ocean world. Acid-proofing of the Knudsens was something to be worried about just as soon as he was sure of what they were dealing with first-hand.

Jacko dropped them gently through one of the thinner patches, until all they could see around them was a flurry white. Fritz peered out through the main viewport, knowing the futility of trying to see much until Jacko had dropped low enough for the visibility to clear.

Slowly, below them it seemed, the mist parted, becoming wispy and dissolving into the air like steam curling from a cup of coffee.

They were very low. There were scarcely thirty feet between the cloud and the ocean of acid, and at some points the two met in a mist. If they landed in the ocean, Fritz knew that it would take some time for the metal of the hull to be eaten away, but it would take barely more than a few seconds to make their craft unserviceable as a spacecraft, leaving them stranded with no means of return.

Beneath them, moving gently in waves and looking as innocent as the Pacific looked in its unreclaimed and unmined areas, lay the ocean.

“Remarkable,” Jacko commented, “How clear it is. I was expecting it to look yellow at the very least.”

“We’ll have to get Greggs down here,” Fritz said. “He’ll be able to check the concentration and give us some idea of the materials we’ll have available to work with. What sort of depths are we talking about, Jacko?”

“Too deep for a rig, if that’s what you were thinking,” Jacko replied. “Not to mention we have a distinct lack of available steel. We might find there are some slightly shallower parts though. How were Colonel Dawson’s preliminary surveys?”

“Pretty comprehensive,” Fritz said. “Certainly enough to see that there isn’t anything that could be called land anywhere. There is one spot I’d like to check though, this point here.”

He tapped at a point on his datascreen. “There’s something showing up here and I’ll be damned if I can work out what it is.”

“Right you are,” Jacko said. “Let me just adjust the navigator.”

The area on the survey showed up as a series of points and lines, almost like a web. As they approached, both men began to look out more carefully, peering through the mist to try to catch the first glimpse of whatever-it-was.

Suddenly Jacko gave a shout. “Look, there.” He pointed off to the right, where, out of the mist, were emerging the shapes of the objects that had shown up in the survey.

Jacko turned the craft towards them and slowed their speed so that they began to glide gently.

Slowly they drifted in, until they could clearly see them for what they were. All around them, branching out from the ocean - Fritz found it difficult not to think of it as water - were the slender and graceful limbs of what looked like smooth silver trees, elegantly stretching out over the surface like a romantic painting. They glinted in the muted light that filtered through the mist, and each branch ended abruptly in a rounded stump.

"How on Terra are they standing?" Jacko asked, more to himself than to Fritz, spiralling the craft in closer around the group of trees.

"They even seem to be metallic, somehow," Fritz added, having picked up the silvered finish, like unpolished soup spoons, to the branches.

"They can't be plants, surely?” Jacko said, his voice raising in incredulity. “I can't understand how they'd be growing, up to their necks in that stuff. Even if their evolution pre-dated the acid, back to when these oceans were still water... I can't even imagine how they'd have developed."

They drew in still closer to one of the trees. "Hold her steady, Jacko," Fritz said. "I'd like to try and take a closer look at one of these if i can - all right if I open the outer door?"

"I'm not jumping in after you if you fall," Jacko said.

"I'll do my best not to, then," Fritz said. "Bring her up to that big one in the middle. I'll lean out and take a look at the top branch."

The ferrycraft held steady beside the tree, unbuffeted by wind or weather in this calm part of the ocean. Fritz pulled the emergency release to unlock and open the outer door, and sat with his feet hanging over the edge for a moment, breathing in the cool grey air.

Looking out over the ocean, broken only by the forest of silver trees emerging above the surface, the planet looked beautiful and ethereal, nothing like as deadly as it actually was. It was almost believable that people could live and be happy here, he thought, if not for the acid bath on their doorstep.

The edge of the silvered branch was about level with his foot, and he reached out with one toe to touch it, trying to gauge its strength. The branch – one of the most slender, being at the tip – was about the thickness of his forearm, with the branches lower down thickening out almost to the size of a man near the surface where the acid lapped.

His toe hit the branch and rang, lightly, with the hollow sound of a metal pipe being struck. Taken aback, he leant down and rapped it once, with his knuckles. It rang again, the sound emanating from the end of the branch, which he now saw was open, extending hollowly down the length of the branch.

He peered down into the hollow branch, trying to see if he could see anything inside, but not quite daring to put his hand in. It could wait until he had a stick at least. Instead, he tapped it with a finger to get a better idea of what it was made of.

“I’m going to try testing the strength of these things,” he called back to Jacko. “If they’re stable, they’d make one hell of a natural rig! Hold her steady, Jacko!”

He sat back, placed his foot against the branch and pushed.

With a mournful creak, the whole huge tree swayed, and to Fritz’s alarm he saw that his slight push had also set the two neighbouring trees quivering and shaking, the whole thing moving back and forth in an alarming, drunken fashion.

“What did you do?” Jacko called. “If you’ve awakened the Kraken, I might never forgive you!”

“I doubt even the Kraken could survive sulphuric acid,” Fritz said dryly. “But these trees definitely can. Unless I’m very much mistaken, they seem to be made of steel.” He got up, and swung the outer door closed. “You know, I might be getting the beginnings of an idea.”

* * *

  
Within a few days, the U.E. squad’s metallurgist, Sam Harvey, had visited the planet and returned with a sample both of part of one of the trees, and also of the acid itself, carefully carried in a glass flask.

To Fritz’s delight, a test on the tree sample confirmed that the silvery branches were indeed made from carbon steel. It was with a considerable lightness that he entered the shipboard chemistry laboratory on their hypership to discuss the preliminary findings.  
  
“It’s just what I hoped,” he told jacko Hine, happily. “It happens that our marine Knudsens are carbon steel in their basic form, ready for coating in whatever polymeric finish is needed to protect it from the particularly nasty elements on many of our frontier worlds.”

“So the question is, is there any reason why the same trick that works so well for the trees wouldn’t work for our Knudsens?” Jacko said, leaning back on the workbench, and picking up the phial that contained the little fragment of the tree. He rattled it experimentally and held it up to the light.

Karen Davis, the Unorthodox Engineers’ chemist shook her head. “None at all. The concentration of the sulphuric acid on Sojea IV is approximately 84%. At certain concentrations, carbon steel immersed in the acid is completely protected by a film of iron sulphate which forms on it. It’s how those trees are still standing.”  
  
“I’d love to have seen the evolutionary process that led to that,” Harvey commented. “‘If at first you don’t succeed, get dehydrated in concentrated sulphuric acid...’ If that wasn’t an effective driver to natural selection, I don’t know what would be. Anyway, neither Davis nor I can see a reason why the process shouldn’t work just as well for us.”  
  
“That’s something,” Fritz said, “but it’s not going to help Colonel Dawson at all. He can’t ship in the number of Knudsens he needs, and even a group of Knudsens lashed together to make a floating platform won’t support the weight of a Goraldi compressor.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“We’ll have to get down there to have another look at those trees. See if we can’t think of a way to use them structurally.”

He and Jacko wandered back down to their accommodation on the ship slowly. “The problem,” Jacko said eventually, “Is that our only available materials are structurally unsound steel pipes and sulphuric acid. With the best will in the world, there’s nothing we can do with that - we’ve already ruled out a rig.”

“With your usual style, you’ve summed it up perfectly,” Fritz said as they passed the officers’ rec room, bustling with noise. “I’ve been giving it some thought and I completely agree with you. There’s nothing else usable on that planet without going to some considerable effort.

“We will have to look further afield, and I doubt the Colonel would look kindly on us using up the resources on his newly discovered and un-surveyed sister planets simply to build him the base that he wants.”

They had reached the door of Fritz’s cabin, and he paused, face drawn into a frown of thought. “Still, I have no doubt we’ll get there in the end. Somehow we always do, thanks to good old ingenuity.” He smiled, went in and closed the door behind him.

* * *

  
Anyone watching the U.E. squad arriving on Sojea VI would imagine that they had been briefed to within an inch of their lives. In fact, all Fritz had done was calmly explain the situation to them, and leave them to get on with it.

True to form, the Squad had applied itself as one to the problem, and the result was one gutted ferrycraft, a shipment of marine Knudsens and the U.E. Squad hovering just above the acid sea with the outer doors open.   
  
They had constructed the first Knudsen hull inside the main cabin of the ferrycraft without any problems at all once the seats were removed, and despite Jacko’s loud complaints to anyone who could hear that he would never be allowed nice things if this was what everyone else did to them.

Harrison oversaw the lowering of the first hull down into the stand of trees, while the remainder of the team set to work constructing the hull of the second. Once this too was complete, it was lowered down to join the first, and the two were lashed together to provide a more stable platform for there rest of the work to continue.

By the end of the day a small flotilla of adapted Knudsens floated gently on the sulphuric acid sea, each moored to several branches of the surrounding trees, which swayed in reaction to the movement of the bobbing units in a gentle, soothing motion.

Jacko Hine turned up near sundown, having returned to the hypership with the ferrycraft and then been run back to Sojea VI by one of Colonel Dawson’s skimmer pilots. All was quiet in the floating camp, the squad happily tucked up in their Knudsens and enjoying some well-deserved R&R.

Fritz was sitting on the roof of his Knudsen, his feet hanging over the edge. Jacko sat down beside him. The mist obscured things to an amazing degree, but sunset at their particular location on Sojea IV was rapidly approaching, bringing with it a slight chill and a deepening of the gloom.

“By Terra but Colonel Dawson doesn’t go on about Dromica and Tahiti IX,” Jacko grumbled. “You’d think the planets personally had stolen his first born, the way he drones on about it over and over.”

“Dromica’s the copper mine?” Fritz asked absently, watching the swaying of the trees in the mist with a hypnotic, dreamy expression.

“No, the sugar farms,” Jacko explained, exasperated. “He’s only mentioned it about eight times in your presence to my certain knowledge. It’s the system that keeps getting the new hypership resources, along with Tahiti IX, the new resort planet. And after all that, he’s sending his crew down to Tahiti IX until we’re finished here, anyway!”

“It’s close by?” Fritz said.

“Tahiti IX?” Jacko said. “Yes, the next closest system apart from Dromica.”

“I meant Dromica,” Fritz said, snapping back into focus and sitting upright. “Oh, now, that’s a thought...”

“What-” Jacko began, but at that moment, from behind Fritz and off to the left there was a sudden flare of light, followed almost immediately by another a little higher and offset slightly from the first.

For a second Fritz's eyes - which had grown used to the gathering darkness of the night - showed spots of colour on the back of his vision and he squinted at the two bright lights, which were followed then by a third, and a fourth, more and more bursting out from all around them.

Eventually he could see that the lights emanated from the ends of each of the branches of almost every silver tree in the stand. When he looked closer, he could see that it wasn't just light, but a curious fan-shape of glowing fronds which waved gently in the mist around them, glowing a warm gold.

They sat for long minutes, staring at this new wonder - joined by others of the U.E. squad, drawn out by the sudden and unexpected flares of light.

“What    
are   
they?” Jacko said, hushed and awed.

“They look like they belong on the sea bed,” Fritz commented. “I wonder how they generate so much light - it seems too much for simple bioluminescence. Simply fascinating. I must set someone on it right away.”

* * *

  
For almost a full two weeks, nothing at all was heard from the Unorthodox Engineering team.

Colonel Dawson’s survey team were making the most of the break, taking their leave time on Tahiti IX. Although the building work there was far from complete, there was still an ample supply of crystal white beaches and turquoise blue oceans for two hundred men used to six month stretches of deep space exploration.

Colonel Dawson himself was getting more than a little concerned – the time left before the U.E. team needed to be back on Terra was dwindling, and he had had no contact at all from Lieutenant Van Noon in the intervening time except for a rather enigmatic request of several hundred sacks of newly produced sugar from Dromica.

Dawson was not the kind of man to whom no news was good news. He favoured regular updates, frequent check-ins, and reports, even if no progress at all had been made. So it was rather to his relief when the transmission from Van Noon came through on the radio phone.

“Good gracious,” Colonel Dawson said as he stepped out of the ferrycraft, which had been able to land firmly on a solid platform. It wasn’t clear whether his exclamation was owing to the existence of the platform, or a reaction to his first sight of the trees.

“Welcome to Sojea VI, Colonel!” Fritz said, welcoming him with a handshake as the ferrycraft took off again, heading back to the hypership to refuel. “So what do you think of our handiwork? We can’t claim credit for the trees, I’m afraid, that’s all Sojea’s own work.”

“They’re beautiful!” Colonel Dawson said. “I never dreamt that we’d find anything approaching plant life on this planet. If that is what they are..?”

“We assumed they were trees,” Fritz said, “And I’ll show you those first, so as to get the excitement out of the way.”

He stepped off the platform onto the deck of the nearest Knudsen, then clambered up onto the roof and offered the Colonel a hand up, which he gratefully took. They began to walk down the length of the Knudsen roof towards a nearby tree, the top of the module clanking gently, depressing and popping back out again with every step.

Colonel Dawson followed Fritz, still gazing in amazement at the eerily beautiful scene around him, the silvery-limbed trees emerging in graceful, branching swoops from the mist.

When they were within touching distance, Fritz reached out and rapped sharply on one smooth bough.

The hollow ring brought Colonel Dawson’s head snapping back around. “Why,” he said, incredulously, “but it’s metal?”

“Yes,” Fritz replied, “Carbon steel, to be exact. It’s what gave us the idea that it would be fine to use these.” He stamped one boot heel on the roof of the Knudsen, earning him an angry return thump from its occupant.

“They’re protected by the very concentration of the acid itself. Elegant, the solutions that nature comes up with. Now, you probably didn't give it a moment's thought, but I asked you to come at this time for a very particular reason.

“In a few minutes it will be sunset at this particular location on Sojea IV.”

"But surely, after sunset we'll what little light we had?" Colonel Dawson said. "How are you going to give your demonstration then? I have to say, I'm ill-prepared for spending a night in a Knudsen, Lieutenant Van Noon."

"I hope things will become clear shortly," Fritz said, "And that you will trust me in this. I appreciate that it all seems a little... unusual at the moment. If I could invite you to take a seat here, it will just be a few minutes more."

Colonel Dawson nodded, and sat down carefully, conscious that following a fall into 84% sulphuric acid, his lifespan would be significantly shorter. "Very well."

They sat on the edge of the Knudsen roof and waited as the dusk fell, becoming incrementally darker and greyer, as the trees faded further and further out of view. As the last of the light fell, Colonel Dawson looked around at where the dark shape of Fritz Van Noon sat, calmly waiting for something.

After a few seconds, the first of the trees sprang into light. When he finally was able to tear his eyes from the sight of the entire stand of trees apparently blossoming before his eyes, Van Noon was looking at him, a smile on his face.

"Not trees," Fritz said, still grinning. "Best we can tell, they're something like the ocean filter feeders on Terra, like corals.

“They've somehow managed to evolve themselves a protective tube which will withstand the acid, and every evening at dusk they emerge to feed. Our best guess is that they're harvesting something from the mist, but that's really a question for a biologist, I'm afraid. Really, I wanted you to know what you were going to be cohabiting with."

He stood up, and they picked their way back to the main platform. With the ferrycraft gone, Colonel Dawson could now see that the platform covered quite a large area, every now and then punctuated by the emergence of one of the silver trees.

The platform was covered with a layer of plastic mesh tiles to proved an even walking surface, but through the holes Colonel Dawson could see a dull matt black substance, which reminded him a little of the igneous rock which forms when lava cools.

“As you can see, my solution in no small way involves the trees."

"Surely the steel tubes aren't strong enough to support a survey station?" The Colonel asked, suddenly apprehensive.

"No, individually, or even in groups, they're not," Fritz said. "I believe that under the ocean's surface, the whole stand of trees in fact traces down to a mere two or three base trunks on the ocean bed.

“However, by encompassing the entire stand of trees, I believe that we have been able to construct a platform that is more than adequate to support you, your team    
and    
your Goraldi compressor for the time that you are here. The fact that the ferrycraft could land safely on it surely proves that.”

“But - how on Terra did you    
do   
it?”

Fritz smiled again. “Believe it or not, we owe it all to your complaints about your neighbours, Colonel,” he said. “That, and some school-level chemistry.”

He led the way over to a small table, where Jacko Hine waited with a pair of glass cups, one of which was filled with a clear colourless liquid, and one which contained a white powder.

“Do you remember this one?” Fritz asked. “This contains acid from the ocean, and this one,” he picked it up, “Well - taste it for yourself. I guarantee that it’s harmless.”

Colonel Dawson licked the tip of one finger and stuck it into the white powder. Gingerly, he licked his finger clean, and his face brightened. "Sugar? Is this the sugar you had brought from Dromica?"

“That’s right,” Fritz said. “Now watch what happens when I mix the two.”

Fritz poured a little of the acid into the sugar, then stepped back to watch. For some time, nothing at all happened. Then, slowly, curls of steam began to wind up from the surface of the vessel. The acid began to boil, bubbling up and giving off wisps of gas that disappeared into the air.

The sugar began to turn dark and blacken and with a slow and seemingly inexorable progression, a sudden mass of matt black material began to emerge from the cup, climbing and growing and steaming like a creature emerging from the primordial ooze.

“Pure carbon,” Fritz explained, with a pleased expression. “We weren’t sure at first but after some preliminary tests we were able to make it in sufficient thickness and in such a way that we could build the entire platform.”

“Not to mention that the cost of bringing in sugar from Dromica was far less than bringing in any other supplies from Earth.”

Colonel Dawson watched Fritz standing next to the mass of carbon with complete disbelief. “They said you were a wonder,” he said, “but I never expected this. Thank-you.”

“Thank me when you get the first results back from your surveys of Sojea,” Fritz said. “I can wait until then.

“I have just one more thing to show you. Technically it wasn’t in the brief, but I have a suspicion that you won’t mind.”

He led the way across the platform, over to the trunk of another tree, Colonel Dawson and Jacko Hine trailing behind him. In the ethereal light given off by the trees, Colonel Dawson could see that this one was connected to a small panel of switches.

It was obvious straight away that something had happened to this tree – while all around it glowed with the golden light of the Sojean indigenous life, this tree was dark.   
  
“We think it simply died,” Fritz explained. “But it serves my purpose tonight for this demonstration.

“We’re not sure yet how the trees themselves glow, but I got to thinking about it myself and, well, I thought the results might be useful to you.

“Have you heard of a lead-acid battery, sir?” Fritz asked. “It’s a way of generating a current from the movement of ions. Given the abundance of acid on Sojea V, I saw the chance to set up a ready power supply for you.”

He reached out, and threw a switch.

Immediately, adding to the golden glow of the ethereal Sojean creatures, bright green, red and blue lights appeared on the previously darkened tree.

“As a demonstration, I think it works rather well,” Fritz said, somewhat immodestly. “The trunks of the trees seem more than capable of carrying a current.

“It means very little to most people now,” Colonel Dawson said solemnly, “But I don’t suppose you are aware of the significance of today’s date, Lieutenant?”

“The twenty-fifth of December?” Jacko said.

“No, sir, I’m afraid I’m not,” Fritz said, regretfully.

“It was a religious holiday celebrated by many of our ancestors, as late as the twenty-third century, before it was largely forgotten. It was marked by the exchange of gifts, and the decoration of one’s house with an evergreen tree.

"After the gift that you have just given me, I think it’s most appropriate that you should have constructed the first Christmas Tree for nearly a thousand years.”


End file.
